Printer

[Count Steer]

Just ordered a Canon Pixma G7050 tank printer (instead of yet another £50+ pack of cartridges for the current Canon Pixma inkjet). Looking at availability of stuff and the range available I think there's a shift in emphasis from companies like Canon. Because they were minting it on selling cartridges and people are now buying tank printers I suspect Canon are losing interest in the home office end of the market. (Obvs they can't detect whether the ink you fill the tank with is theirs like they can with cartridges, the value of their lower end printer business has dropped and they can't just push up the prices of the printers beyond what their competitors are selling).

I'll report back when it gets installed (got to use up the current ca£tridges first ).

[Horse]

Printing now for us @home is a necessary evil. For bulk work printing Filly will go into the office - but that's time and travel costs.

But we probably don't do enough to justify a more expensive (albeit probably cheaper ink) 'tank' printer.

[Count Steer]

Printing now for us @home is a necessary evil. For bulk work printing Filly will go into the office - but that's time and travel costs.

But we probably don't do enough to justify a more expensive (albeit probably cheaper ink) 'tank' printer.

I decided we couldn't afford not to. Looking back at orders for cartridges (£50+ for a multipack) it's been costing £100-150 pa. Which? estimate the 3 year costs of the one I've ordered at.........£5.60.

The current printer is a few years old anyway so will probably cock its toes up soon (which the previous one did, leaving me with ££s worth of unusable cartridges. )

TBH I could have gone for a colour laser as neither of us do photo printing but when you want scanning, duplex, print over WiFi etc and might want to do the odd decent colour pic I decided, at £285, to take a punt on the Canon as the Which? review had it as a 'best buy'.

[Horse]

Hmmm Filly deals with the cartridge purchases. How much grief do I want ... is it a going to fall in 'poking a wasp nest' category?

[Count Steer]

Well, it's arrived. I suppose I'd better set it up as a second wireless printer before the Amazon 30 day (or whatever it is) warranty expires....and I still have the packaging

It's very well packaged and quite big but it does come with 3 bottles of black ink as well as one each of the CMY ones (apparently so you can fill all the tanks with black if you want to be monochrome).

Usual thing with manuals, just basic set up instructions...90% is in forrin and go on line to read the heavy duty set-up and use stuff. So they cut back on paper but 95% of what they provide is forrin, 3% is safety, warranty and recycling info and 2% is how to get started in English.

[the_priest]

HP Smarttank Printer. I've been converted to these. Mine is a 7300 series, does double sided printing, colour and it is actually pretty good quality as well. Can do several hundreds of copies in a go. WiFi connected, so the whole family use it as well. Ink is cheap enough at OEM prices, you can also replace the heads as well, so that is a bonus. I'm sticking with these and they are cheap enough at around £270 new and less refurbished.

[roadster]

My Canon Pixma A3 is still working well and its lasted longer than any previous ones including HP and Epson. The cost is that genuine ink is expensive and even the XL cartridges don't last very long. I can go several weeks without switching it on and so far it will always self maintain better than any other inkjet. This is probably where the ink goes rather than on the printing, but the high quality colour prints make it worthwhile for me.

[Count Steer]

My Canon Pixma A3 is still working well and its lasted longer than any previous ones including HP and Epson. The cost is that genuine ink is expensive and even the XL cartridges don't last very long. I can go several weeks without switching it on and so far it will always self maintain better than any other inkjet. This is probably where the ink goes rather than on the printing, but the high quality colour prints make it worthwhile for me.

I noted that the last XLs I bought contained less ink than the previous XLs I guess if you are doing high quality colour prints and regular office type use it's worth having an ink jet and a second laser or tank printer but if you're low volume high quality then just an ink jet makes sense - particularly if you're doing larger format work).

I'll set up my tank job this pm.

[Count Steer]

Got it all set up ok. First with a Windoze laptop, which is fine. Then I made the mistake of following instructions to set up my Samsung tablet, which involved downloading the Canon app. I wish I'd tried printing from the tablet before I did that as it rather takes over...my phone, without the app, quite happily recognises the printer and will print from within the usual apps like the pdf reader but now, if I want to print from the tablet I have to go via the Canon app and I can't see how to change the phone settings back. It's no biggie but I may be tempted to delete the Canon app.

I haven't tried photo prints on decent paper but on plain A4 printing from Windows they're v washed out (more than on the other inkjet) so maybe tanks aren't for photographers? Again, not a problem as I haven't printed photos for a long time.

Strangely, one of the ink colours had less than the stated 70ml in. No sign of leakage.